Entrance to bathroom before. Notice that there is no door between the bedroom and the vanity.

The new entrance. Isn’t this an enticing view? We have a door! Now we can brush our teeth and not wake up the other person. We plan to change the ugly gold handle on the door eventually, when we replace the door hardware throughout the house.

The overall picture, before. Note the door between vanity and toilet/bath area. If you’re going to have a separate door in the bath, it needs to be just for the toilet. Duh. Also note the harsh, bare bulb, 80′s lighting, with at least two sockets broken. Our closet is on the wall to the left, out of view. We didn’t change that at all. The wall where the towel is hanging disappears in the remodel.

The overall picture, after. We can’t get the glass shower door installed for a few weeks so we have a shower curtain up temporarily. The shower and floor tile is actually grey, but it does have brown in it, and that’s what the photo seems to show. It’s a textured porcelain tile, which does not feel cold to walk on. The vanity is also grey, not brown. The shower floor and niche tile are glass mosaic tile, with all kinds of bright colors in it, which is hard to capture in a photo, but which was one of my favorite design elements. But yes, the walls are purple! I was a bit worried about having the toilet sticking out like that, but we were limited by the architecture. Originally, we were going to push back the wall where the shower faucet is, but it was full of duct-work. Instead, we moved the toilet out towards the vanity and made the shower about eight inches wider than it was when it was a tub/shower combo. We made decisions like on the fly and I like the way it turned out, with the shower in that more narrow niche. We were originally going to tile just the shower walls but when we realized we had that niche, flanked so nicely by symmetrical partial walls, we decided to bring the tile all the way out to the edge, and I think that makes a huge impact – I love it!

The old vanity. Note that there are cabinets, but no drawers. Tall cabinets are not an efficient use of space, especially when there is plumbing blocking much of it. Also note the carpeted floor.

The new vanity. Ah, perfection. I love the “floating” vanity style and all the modern elements. Finally, sinks with only one handle each! Whenever I see a two-handled sink I want to scream, “Yes, God damn it, the Parthenon!” and then launch into a monologue about how ridiculous it is to follow old rules that were used before we had new materials and methods of construction. Come on, one handle is objectively better! We picked this vanity from a web site and got very lucky that it goes so well with the tile. It was probably our riskiest decision. It’s good quality, too. All the drawers and cabinets have that “no-slam” feature so you can just tap them closed. It feels solid. Also, this vanity is a whole foot shorter than the old one, but it feels like it has more storage, because of the drawers. The basin sinks also create a nice definition of space for stuff on the counter. Of course, the whole vanity is installed higher than the old one, so we don’t have to lean down so far. I’ll have to wait until I lose my pregnant belly before I can appreciate that, though. For now, I have to stand sideways to lean over the sink.

I can’t believe I used this sink for almost three years. Yuk! Cracked, stained, impossible to clean, impossible to get your hands fully under the faucet because it’s so close to the back of the sink, and impossible to change the water pressure or temperature with soapy hands not just because of the two handles, but because they were goddamn cylinders with very little grip. This was bad design, even for the 80s. Oh, I could go on.

Another view of the new vanity showing the matching medicine cabinets with shelving (great storage!). You can also see a bit of the awesome light fixtures above. You can see in the reflection in the left mirror that we also installed two recessed halogen lights in the ceiling in the vanity area, so we don’t have to put super high-wattage glaring bulbs everywhere. The recessed lights are also on a dimmer. I’m a firm believer in dimmers for almost every light fixture. (Sorry, federal government, that rules out your CFL garbage.) We plan to install towel racks for the hand towels on either side of the vanity (love the efficiency of that!), but we need to wait to see exactly how the glass shower door will work before we decide on those, since they’ll need to match whatever towel racks we use in the bathing area.

Before, the ugly tub and shelving. I detest shower curtains. They always blow in and touch you. It’s creepy. We don’t mind losing the tub because it was so small and shallow it was really useless for an adult. We didn’t have space for a real tub. No big sacrifice for me. Also, who in their right mind would choose shelving that allows everything to fall through the cracks? I get the idea that this is a bathroom and you don’t want standing water on a shelf, but there are other options, people! And if you’re so concerned about standing water, why is the shelving made of metal that gets rusty? Again, I can’t believe I lived with this for so long.

Even in this shot, it’s hard to see the reflective glass tile in the niche, but I was trying to capture the contrast between the matte finish on the wall tile and the iridescense of the glass. This was taken before they had cleaned all the grout off the tile, so it’s a bit murky. But imagine the difference between being surrounded by this, versus standing in a squeaky, cheap tub with boring white tile, getting touched by a shower curtain. I’m happy!

I also have a couple of videos of the construction process and the finished result, but I haven’t gotten them up on YouTube yet. I’ll try to get that done when I take photos of the other two bathrooms.

• Woke up half hour late
• Got dressed (no chance for shower), got Sam dressed, got Sam breakfast
• Made and drank coffee – made some for Adam too because next I had to…
• Put coffee maker in car to return to Bed, Bath and Beyond (this is our second Keurig that is defective) – the damn thing leaked water all over my floors and all over me – cleaned it up
• Left to take Sam to school at 8:45am
• Realized that I left my phone at home – ironic, given how much I ended up using it later, and also, that I thought my day was frantic now
• When dropping Sammy off, confirmed the time for Mother’s Day Tea school event on Friday
• Exchanged coffee maker at BBB and bought spoons (I think Sam has been throwing spoons in the trash can)
• Stopped off at home to pick up phone (can’t live without my Droid)
• McDonalds for breakfast because it is fast and right next to my hair salon
• Got my hair done from 10-11:15
• While sitting under the dryer, read this article, Is This A Great Country or What?, which ended up partially inspiring this Day in the Life post by making me think about technology and Target and freeways and how much I was able to do thanks to all of that great stuff people have created
• Phone message from car dealership (On Sunday, I put in 5 requests for quotes from local dealerships and they haven’t stopped calling since)
• Quick stop at supermarket for milk, tissue, sugar, salmon (we seriously could not wait one more day for more tissue)
• Home to put groceries away – left phone in the car since I would only be inside for a few minutes
• Let the dog out – still really loving my new deck with stairs so I can let him out and go do other things until he knocks on the door to come back in (he bangs the glass door with his claws – cute!)
• 5 minutes until I have to leave to pick up Sam so I sit at my computer and see a phone message from Adam from just a moment ago (Google Voice is awesome – it transcribes messages and puts them in my email where I notice them before I would ever check the phone)
• Went to the car and got my phone and called Adam back – he rode his new motorcycle to the mall to register it and it wouldn’t start back up again – he might need me to pick him up but I need to hold tight until he figures out what he’ll do next – luckily the mall is near Sam’s school
• Left to pick up Sam from school
• Call from car dealership on the way to school – good price, do they have the color we want? They’ll get back to me
• On the way to school, called friend P. to see if she found a sitter for tomorrow night so we could go and see the Atlas Shrugged movie – she said she couldn’t find one so I need to try to find one
• In line to pick up Sam from school, called babysitter and left message
• Right when Sam walks up to the car and I need to help her get in, got call from Adam – he is just waiting for a tow and do Sam and I want to bring him some lunch and we can picnic outside on the grass near the bike? Nice idea, but can’t do it today
• Off on to the next set of errands – on the way to get gas, got call back from babysitter: yes, she can do it, so now I have to get her the address of P.’s house and time she should come which I’m not sure about yet
• Got gas (yikes, those prices!)
• While pumping, got call from friend A. which I ignored for the moment due to complete overwhelmption (nice word, huh?)
• Burger King for lunch, at Sam’s request – it was near Target, our next stop
• At the Burger King indoor playground, I met a mother with twin girls – she was told they would be a boy and girl at 15 weeks but only found out they were two girls when they were delivered, despite the fact that she had an ultrasound once a week throughout the last half of her pregnancy! They never figured it out because the babies were just too squished up in there to see! Holy shit! My only consolation is that all of that happened in Japan, where I’m going to assume they have their heads up their asses to retain my sanity. (Her husband was stationed there but they were evacuated because of the nuclear plant.) All in all, an interesting lunch.
• On the 100 yard drive from Burger King to Target, got the call from Adam that I’d need to pick him up from the mechanic where they were towing the bike in about an hour – actually, I think it took 3 phone calls because he had to call me back once and because I had to pull the car over and get out of the car to hear him because Sam had decided to throw a tantrum because I locked the car doors – she said, “You locked me in!!!!!!!!” even though she is strapped down to that car seat with a gazillion buckles and belts – interesting, how a four-year-old mind works
• Enjoyable trip to Target for a sleeping bag for Sam, which she needed by tomorrow if our Atlas movie plans work out – picked up new leotard and tights for Sam as long as we were there – that girl is growing!
• On the way out, Sam says, “I’m hungry” even though we finished lunch less than 15 minutes earlier – I guess she really is growing – bought her a bag of chips – some days are just junk food days
• In the car, called Adam to let him know we were on the way
• Drove 11 miles to pick up Adam at the mechanic – luckily, no traffic, or this could have been an hour long event
• Sam napped in car
• Once we got to the mechanic, had to wait for Adam, so I napped in car
• Came home with Adam and found that I had left the dog outside for over 3 hours – since I had left to pick up Sam from school – ooops, sorry to my neighbors for what I’m sure was a lot of barking
• It’s now 3pm and I remembered that phone call from friend A. and checked – she had left me a message about meeting at the park with the kids at 3:30 – and on this beautiful day, with Sam having already napped, that was a definite GO
• While packing up gear for the park, heard the jingle of the ice cream truck – he usually comes at 8:30pm when kids should be in bed and I had promised Sam that if he came at a decent hour we would get ice cream – so we got ice cream!
• While eating ice cream on the front porch, called friend P. to decide on logistics for movie and dinner tomorrow – she told me I should check with her husband, C. because he thinks we need to get to the theater early
• Noticed that I had Burger King on my white shirt – went inside to change while Sam finished up her Bubble Gum Popsicle (when will she learn that the blue one is not always the yummiest one?)
• On the way to the park, called friend A. to let her know we were coming and received two calls from car dealerships which I didn’t answer
• On the way to the park, called C. and decided on logistics for dinner and movie
• At the park, learned that friend A. has recently begun to consider homeschooling – we had a lot to talk about!
• Many bumps and bruises at the park today, for some reason – maybe the kids were having a frantic day, too
• On the way home from the park, called babysitter but she couldn’t take the info because she was driving so I had to call later
• Home at 5pm – set Sam up in front of the iPad so I could use my computer for a few minutes without distraction – hadn’t sat at it all day, with the exception of that one quick check when I got the message from Adam about his motorcycle – thank god for the Droid, which kept me connected all that time
• Wrote up most of this Day in the Life
• Called babysitter and left a message
• Went online to buy the tickets for Atlas and found out that I had the movie time wrong, but I figured a way to work it out and bought tickets anyway – but now I needed the babysitter at a different time
• Called babysitter again and got her the correct time and location – finally!
• Sent email to friends and Adam confirming plans for movie tomorrow
• Spaced out in front of Facebook and email for 15 minutes
• Took care of the one other thing on my calendar for the day – a minor financial transaction
• Cooked dinner – it was relaxing, even though I had to work around a sink full of dirty dishes since I had never unloaded the washer from last night (and yes, there was a sink full of dirty dishes even though we ate fast food for breakfast and lunch because I was still catching up with the dishes from the weekend!)
• Ate dinner – unfortunately, one of my failed experiments (salmon with grapes – yuck)
• Put Sam to bed – she read 3 pages of one of her Little Bear Early Reader books to me – one of the highlights of my day
• Unpacked and checked out the sleeping bag – it will work for tomorrow
• Took tags off new leotard and tights and put them in the laundry basket
• Adam set up the new coffee maker and did the dishes and brought all the clean laundry up from the basement, leaving me time to finish this blog post before I head off to watch last week’s episode of Survivor and maybe read an interview or two in 100 Voices before I go to sleep
• Really, really good day. Really, really tired.

• I booked our hotels for Rome and Florence in April.  WE ARE GOING TO ITALY!  I can hardly believe it, I’m so excited.  I hope to write another update about my planning soon.
• We’ve turned our cat into an indoor/outdoor cat.  I have a great story about how he fell into the drainage sewer.
• My dishwasher broke again a couple of weeks ago, and we just got it repaired yesterday.  We definitely got a lemon when we bought it a year ago, but it’s pretty much been rebuilt now.  Going a few weeks without a dishwasher over the past few months really makes me appreciate technology.  What an amazing, wonderful world we live in!
• Our six-month-old coffee maker hadn’t been working right for months and I finally got around to calling Bed, Bath, and Beyond about it.  It was still under warranty, but they exchanged it with no questions asked.  I figured I’d have to send it to the manufacturer myself or something.  That was a wonderful surprise.
• Adam has grown a beard.  He had one when I met him, but I asked him to shave it off.  He looks good in a beard, but I’m not a big fan of them, generally.  However, I kind of like it this time around.  Change can be kind of sexy.
• We paid off our second mortgage and refinanced our house.  We actually started off with three loans because Adam’s parents lent us the money for the down payment.  But after paying off two of the loans and the refinance, our monthly payment is reduced by just around $1000.  We have an extra grand every month.  Wow!
• I signed up for a creative writing class at the local community college which starts next week.
• We completed our 2010 Adventure Box.  2010 was not a great year for us.  I guess the best part was that Adam got tenure.  OCON was also a big highlight.
• When we took down the Christmas decorations, Sam was so disappointed (and so were Adam and I!) that we decided that we’re going to start a new tradition of putting up snowmen decorations for the rest of the winter after Christmas.  January and February are really the most drab months of the year, and the Christmas let-down doesn’t help.  Let’s keep the cheer going until spring, when nature will provide the delight.
• We saw a nice performance of The Nutcracker (but it wasn’t a ballet – more like a fancy puppet show with singing and dancing).  Sam seems to really love live performances.
• Speaking of live performances, we’ll be seeing Mary Poppins during our trip to Manhattan in a couple of weeks.  It will be only my second Broadway show, and Sam’s first.  I’m really looking forward to it.
• We tried to take Sam to an elaborate ice-sculpture exhibit (so elaborate that they charged $25 each for tickets!) but she got so scared she wouldn’t go in.  I know another mother who physically forced her sobbing, scared three-year-old to go in and I got all judgmental about what a bad mother she was, but then I realized that she has more than one child, and that makes things not quite so clear-cut.  The other child might have missed out if they hadn’t all gone in.  Maybe I’ll have to deal with those issues someday.
• My slacker-mom tendencies have resulted in Sam getting a staph infection on her bottom.  And I had to suffer the embarrassment of the doctor telling us we should bathe her more often.  Okay, so I wasn’t really embarrassed.  I actually found the whole thing quite funny, except for the infection part.
• Adam and I had a nice adult night out at a party just after Christmas.
• I sent my spit into a company who will analyze my DNA.  I’ll get the results in a couple of months. Fun!

That’s all I can think of for now.  It’s been a very busy time, but mostly good.  I have high hopes for 2011.

• I’ve now done four injections of Lupron.  It’s easy as pie and doesn’t hurt a bit.  The first one was stressful in exactly the way I expected:  I felt uncertain that I was getting the dosage right and getting rid of air bubbles and all of that.  But after the first time, it’s been no problem.  Sam keeps asking to watch and I’d totally let her except that I keep forgetting.  But doing it with her around is not the big issue that I had feared.
• We had Family Movie Night on Saturday and watched some weird Rudolph spin-off – something about the Lost Isle of Toys.  I really disliked it.  The music was bland and the story was preachy.  We’re getting our classic Rudolph from Netflix later this week!
• Today or tomorrow, I swear, I’m going to start planning my Jewish Christmas dinner.  We’re having one or two guests, and it will be simple in every way except that I’ll cook for two days.  I love it!
• Our Italy plans are slowly progressing.  I booked the airline tickets last week.  I still haven’t booked hotels, though.  Everything is turning out to be more complicated than I had anticipated.  Prices are higher, there were less flights to choose from, etc.  But now that the flight is booked I have a sense that THIS REALLY IS GOING TO HAPPEN.  Woohoo!
• We’re working on refinancing our house and it is also turning out to be much more complicated than I had anticipated.  Did you know that a large check might take up to ten business days to clear?  I suspect this is a new phenomenon due to post 9.11 financial regulations (or maybe other new regulations).  My bank told me that it has not always taken that long.  I planned things around certain timing and now the whole thing might fail because of this.  Regulations – arg!
• I still have tons of Christmas shopping to do.  In fact, I must leave right now to do exactly that.  Bye!